


No comfort in responsibility

by sandyk



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Endgame, Time Travel, mention of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 00:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19346035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandyk/pseuds/sandyk
Summary: A slice of something larger - Tony and Nat trailing a bad man trying to change time.





	No comfort in responsibility

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine. No profit garnered. Title from Car Seat Headrest's drunk drivers/killer whales. Thank you forever a!!! For the trope bingo square fake relationship.

Tony scratched at his full beard. It tended to be more period appropriate for all the periods he'd been jumping to. Luckily a simple suit usually passed muster for the local yokels, even if the looseness of the cut or size of lapels and ties would occasionally stand out as odd. He was much better off than Natasha. If she'd been any kind of normal woman, it might have been hard. But she was a super spy extraordinaire, so she managed to look perfect era appropriate with only a light mugging at most. 

She pulled at his wrist lightly. She said, "1963, but Arizona. Phoenix. I guess he's not stopping the JFK assassination."

"Do you know who did that?" Tony said it quietly. 

She looked at him with her usual sort of friendly contempt or affectionate judgment. "Lee Harvey Oswald, of course."

Tony paid for a newspaper and took one out. He scanned through each page with his glasses. He took out what looked like an actual paper tablet and looked at the first page. "Well. Well now, wait. I think I know why our friend is here."

He headed for the court house across the street. Natasha trailed behind him. She said, "You're not going to tell me."

"So there's this fella in there who's got a case in court. First round of court, I think," Tony said. 

"Go ahead, be coy," Nat said. "What do we need to do?"

"Make sure this rapist gets the right lawyer," Tony said. 

They got inside and Natasha worked her spycraft witchery to get them past the nominal security. Then Tony grabbed her wrist. "There he is."

Their favorite friend they'd been chasing across two centuries was wearing a very ugly and period appropriate suit. He was glaring at a group of people, including a lawyer. Nat moved quickly with barely a whisper of fabric so she was right in front of him. "Hello," she said. 

The Bad Guy said, "Don't think I won't shoot you right here."

Tony was behind Evil Quantum Leap, pushing a knife into his back. He said, "Don't think I won't stab you right here."

"You'll let this happen, you'll ruin our world," Bad Guy said.

"I'm a fan," Tony said. "Let Ernie have his lawyer."

The group of people had left. Bad Guy leaned suddenly and pushed the knife back towards Tony, Natasha lashed out and just missed both of them. There was a whoosh and a stink of alcohol and Baddie was gone. Tony said, "Fuck. Let's check this way."

Natasha went faster around the corner. Usually their bad guy whooshed out and that meant he was done, but neither of them were taking chances.

Nat said, "Looks like Ernie is okay. Or he has his lawyer. Why do we care?"

"Ernesto Miranda," Tony said. "I love that warning."

"Did your computer remember that?" She was smiling. 

"No, I did. Semester of specific American history at MIT back in the day. I met Rhodey in that class," Tony said. "It makes sense Mr. Bad wants to stop any shackles on cops. He does love his vigilante justice."

"We have to find a name for him," Nat said. "I really can't take your constant flow of nicknames."

"Think of a good one, I'll stick with it," Tony said.

They went to lunch at a diner and Nat put her purse on the table. The waitress came by and Nat immediately turned on her girlfriend persona. She kept touching Tony's hand and it very much almost felt sincere. He admired her abilities. When the waitress left, Nat turned back into herself. The one he knew and mostly platonically loved. He missed his wife. Which didn't mean he couldn't look. Pepper understood, would understand. 

Nat said, "We should just call him Bradley. As far as we know, it's his name."

"Boring," Tony said. 

The waitress came with their very bland and highly awful food. "This is the part nostalgia gets wrong," Tony said. "The food sucks."

"I still don't get this. This time," she gestured with her hand in a loop. 

"Me neither," Tony said. "It's why we're both alive, though, so I'm not pushing too hard." He spent half an hour every night thinking about time travel, how Bradley was doing it, how they were even doing it. 

"I know that's not true," Nat said. She carefully ate her sandwich. "This is nothing like how Bruce explained it."

Tony hadn't been there for that. Natasha had been taken from a later moment in time than Tony. 

And somehow the machine in Nat's purse which Tony had partially designed in the future worked to carry them back and forth through time. Somehow, somehow, somehow. He hated all of it. He still didn't understand completely how any of it worked, he didn't understand how Bradley intended it to work and he hated uncertainty he couldn't experiment away. 

"I didn't hear Bruce's explanation but time travel, as far as I know, is largely theoretical or so I thought. Theoretical means theory and theory means not yet tested by reality. So clearly, with a little testing in reality, theory was wrong. You can snatch people out of time before they die or, apparently, years before they die, and Bradley can travel around trying to change the USA into a fascist police state. Or more of one, sorry, I don't know your politics."

Nat pressed her lips together. "What we know for sure is that because we were plucked out of time we're the only ones who can do this job."

"We're theoretically the only ones who can do this job. No one else really volunteered," Tony said. "But we can stop. We can go back. I can have my wedding."

"It was really nice," Nat said. 

"I invited you?"

"Of course you did," Nat said. "You actually invited everyone."

"Of course I did," Tony said. "I'm a friendly guy."

"We can go back whenever we want," Nat said. "We could go back now."

"Maybe after the next jump. We almost got him this time," Tony said.

**Author's Note:**

> Information about the case of Ernesto Miranda from wikipedia and the podcast Not Guilty.


End file.
